"Yes, to the "War in Afghanistan," but not in Iraq. That one should be the " Occupation of Iraq."

-- Karen M

Does the new bill about getting U.S. troops out of Iraq also cover Afghanistan? I hope not. Will we stay in Afghanistan after we get out of Iraq? I hope so.

Did we not hear that the population of the secret dungeons was something like 14,000 people? Somebody, please refresh us on this topic. ?Only 14 people transferred?

I never have used "Anonymous" as a signature. I use a nickname, but Salon could find me if they wanted to find me.

Under Salon's new system, "Anonymous" might be okay when people do not want Alberto Gonzales to know who they are, if they trust Salon not to tell. I would trust Salon.

A couple people, early on in this thread, suggested some sort of "Premium Members Only" option. I do not get it. I do not believe it would accomplish anything good. I would stay away from it.

Nobody "cared" about torture before because nobody really believed Americans have been torturing. Even now, most of the people who vote for W.Bush and his pals do not believe it.

It goes against their lifelong patriotic assumptions. They think it's just another trumped-up liberal issue. Same for American Dungeons.)

(Please forgive me for posting too much here. American Torture is my hot-butt issue.)

They cried, "Wolf!" before, about the Iraqi WMDs. Now they need to explain more, to concince us to pay attention.

Except for the last entry, they are pretty clever. We get much worse every day, out in the real world.

Hooray for West Michigan!

(And, has anybody pointed out yet how lucky those British sailors were when they were captured by Iranians, rather than Americans? Americans might have subjected the Brits to Al Gonzalez's Torture Policy, i.e. pain just below the point of organ failure or death. It appears that the Iranians were much kinder and gentler.)

A few months ago, McCain could have agreed with the Baker Commission, and he could have come out with guns blazing, harping daily on W.Bush's and Cheney's lies/brutality/arrogant stupidity and ignorant arrogance.

It was only a few months ago. If he had done so, he would be a shoo-in for President, given his opposition. But McCain took the delusional Victory Route instead.

Cryin out loud, I still am on McCain's e-mail list, and just last week, some McCain campaign worker called me, to see whether I would serve as his precinct captain. (NO!!!) It's only a few months difference, though. Run from John McCain! Run as fast as you can!

Does this carry over into Human Resources and Employment?

Despite what G.W.Bush says about people from other countries coming here to do "the jobs Americans don't want to do," we have many thousands of well-educated, well-paid non-Americans working here. Many of these people work in Info Technologies.

If the US economy goes down, should we assume that these people will be laid off first, before Americans? How much of an impact will that have on their home countries?

Or, will American employers keep these people on, and lay off Americans instead? (We might presume that these people make lower salaries than Americans for comparable production. So American employers might prefer them over Americans.)

So, in macro-economic terms, would these people exacerbate the effect of the US economy's troubles on the rest of the world? Or mitigate it??

[Note that it may be hard to find hard data about these people, because our political leaders want to maintain the preposterous fiction that "guest workers" only do "the jobs Americans do not want to do."]

I know many Chinese people and Indians who have great jobs in the USA. They have jobs Americans want. Maybe they have the same effect on U.S. wages and the U.S. economy as the low-skill immigrants.

And our Captains of Industry want more of them. The same arguments seem to apply at the top of the job ladder and at the bottom. And, the same hypocrisy, if we believe the excellent previous post.

We at Salon have known/written/read about our leaders for a long time. But many nice Americans who vote still need to hear it, in detail, over and over again.

They still do not believe our leaders are guilty of anything beyond normal political schenanigans. They need to realize that they are being treated as suckers. And they need a good excuse for having been fooled.

I am at the tag-end of a right wing e-mail forwarding ring, involving some very nice people in my own family. They STILL send barfy stories about G.W. Bush praying over the amputated right hands of his U.S. Army victims, and such. And they still believe these things are arguments IN FAVOR of G.W. Bush.

Please keep after them!

Senator McCain, and everybody else:

Let's bring half of our U.S. forces home from Iraq, and send the other half to Afghanistan. Let's build Afghanistan back up with half of the money we would have spent on Iraq.

We still will be positioned on Iran's flank.

Iraq will not be pretty, but I will bet the ranch that it will not get any uglier than it is right now.

Authoritarian Neocons may think Rome is a model. (I cannot figure out what other model they might have.) But:

1. The guys who brought down the Roman Republic and established the Roman Empire, Julius and Augustus, were successful generals, unlike our failed chickenhawks.

2. Julius was on the side of the Roman people, and against the Roman equivalent of Neocons.

3. After Julius and Augustus, the Romans got horrid leaders such as Caligula and Nero et al. And only a few Roman Emperors rose above mediocrity.

McCain for President and Rice for V.P! (????!)